At the shop I worked at several years ago, one of the older uys was very irate because people kept stealing his disposable lighter (actually, he kept losing them). He decided to solve the problem by “engraving” his new lighter with a hot soldering iron. Naturally, he melted thru the plastic, and butane began jetting out the side. Unnaturally, he decided to try to seal the hole by melting plastic over it. It was during this phase that the butane ignited, sending a jet of flame about 4 feet. In panic, he threw the lighter away; I watched as it spun majestically through the air and landed right into a full trash can, which caught fire. Fortunately, a quick blast from a handy extinguisher put the fire out, and there were no injuries.
I was working at Hardee’s as a teenager for a summer job. The ketchup used came in five gallon foil pouches, which were placed in a holder bolted to the wall. To change an empty pouch, you would remove the old pouch take off the plastic spigot, take the cap off of the new pouch, attach the spigot, make sure the spigot was in the “off” position, then put it in the wall holder. Simple.
After carefully explaing the procedure to a new employee, I watched as he removed the old bag, and then put the new bag in the holder. He then remembered that he was supposed to change the spigot, and removed it from the old pouch. Being too lazy to take the heavy pouch from the holder, he removed the cap, releasing a stream of catsup directly into his chest, then spent the next minute trying to force the spigot onto the mouth of the pouch against the stream of ketchup. By the time he finished, the bag was half empty, and he looked like a refugee from a slasher movie.
What makes this so stupid is that a week later, he did it again.
I didn’t witness the act itself, but saw the aftermath. Once, in the Air Force, while we were working the night shift, one of my cohorts got called by his moron wife; the furnace had gone out in their mobile home. It just wasn’t his week; not only was his car in the shop, but he was under the weather with a nasty cold. But his wife raised a fuss until someone else agreed to drive the husband home right then and there.
Once there, the wife said the furnace was making funny noises. Fine, hubby says, coughing and sneezing. He turns his squadron cap backwards, pulls out his Bic and crawls into the access tunnel. He’s muttering to himself that he can’t see shit. Click, goes the lighter… click… click…
The friend recalled what a hopeless ditz this guy’s wife is, so he asked her how soon after she discovered the problem did she turn off the gas.
“Gas…? Turn off…?”
BAH-WHOOM!
Hubby managed to blink just as the fireball engulfed him, but he lost his eyebrows, eyelashes, sideburns and mustache, plus the front inch of scalp not covered by the baseball-style cap. He lost pretty much the top layer of skin on his face, neck and hands. But before he’d let the friend drive him to the base hospital, the poor bastard insisted on coming back to the shop to explain his impending absence to the shop-chief. He looked like a goddamned alien.
I guess the dumbest thing wasn’t crawling into the crawlspace without checking the gas, it was getting married to–and trusting–that ditz.
In the army, doing a short course that could’ve been called “Demolition 101” - in other words, very basic course in handling of explosives.
At a final test we were handed the paraphernalia necessary to detonate an (inert) 500g charge using an (inert) detonator crimped onto a slow fuse (I’m probably using the wrong terms here, sorry.) This was to be the last test before we’d finish the course by setting off a small but real charge.
Anyway, most of us handled this daunting task without problems, but J. Lauridsen apparently hadn’t been listening: He managed to insert the detonator into the charge, but was then left with the problem of getting the detonator to ignite. Not one to be stumped, he ignored crimping tongs, slow fuses etc. - he simply pulled out a box of matches and, under the eyes of an astonished instructor, lit a match and jammed it into the open end of the detonator! Had this been with real explosives, he would’ve immediately ignited the detonator - and the charge - detonating about a pound of highpowered explosive about a foot from his face.
Lauridsen was not allowed to finish the course.
S. Norman
At one of labs I used to work at, every few months we’d generate a gallon or so of waste sulfuric acid, and we’d dispose of it by neutralizing it and dumping it down the drain. The usual way to do this was to fill up a sink with water and a dump in a bunch of baking soda, and slowly pour in the acid. The sink would foam and bubble each time another splash of acid was poured in and then settle down again. Periodically, you check the pH with test strips to see if the mixture is approaching neutral or if you need to add more baking soda. It would take about an hour to neutralize a gallon.
So one day I was quite busy and another chemist volunteered to spend the time slowly neutralizing acid in the sink if I showed her how. I spent about ten minutes showing her and finally felt confident she could handle it. It’s just a big crude titration and she had a Masters Degree in chemistry after all.
Apparently it wasn’t going fast enough for her, so once she got the water in the sink to neutral pH, she threw in a handful of KOH which immediately made the pH shoot up to 14.
“Cool enough,” I supposed; “she has the Masters Degree. I just hope she adds that acid reeeeealy slowly.”
Just then as I turn and start to walk away, out of the side of my eyes I see her dump half a beaker (half of a 500ml beaker) of pure acid (approaching pH 0) into the sink full of pH 14.
I instinctively raised my arm to shield my face as I turned my shoulder and ducked as the whole sink went FOOOOOOOM!!! filling the air and covering the walls and the chemist with this nasty black messy mixture.
The funny part came ten minutes later seeing her toes poking through the tips of her socks and shoes which had been eaten away.
Electronics Technician “A” school, Great Lakes, Il:
Basic Electronics portion…
We were doing basic troubleshooting on a ‘NEETS’ unit, a modular configuran unit that becomes a radio, timer circuit, simple computer, etc, depending on what sort of pre-faulted boards you place on top of it. The boards have exposed electronics for easy troubleshooting. I sat down at a unit, and found that it had a fault in the power supply (sealed inside the base, something we’re not to touch at this point in our training), and the main circuit breaker kept popping. So I go sit at the next unit, and get to work. Another sailor sits at the station I just vacated, gets the same issue, and then pushes the NEETS unit against the back of the station to hold the breaker in. Happy with his fix, he begins troubleshooting his boards. About two minutes later, every capaciter on all three boards simultaneously burst with a loud POP, and our brain trust is sitting back on the back two legs of his chair with the stupidest look on his face while instructors rush in from all corners. Bits of paper dielectric are floating in the air…
Radar Phase…
Troubleshooting a prefaulted transmission unit, one of the guys though he’d found the problem: An open 5KV transmission line. He went to measure the voltage drop across the line, fortunately following full personal safety proceedures, as his lab partner had set the meter to measure current, not voltage, and he failed to check the settings. Two slagged high-voltage probes and a blown meter later, he was picking himself out of another team’s test station, 5 meters from where he’d been standing just a moment before…
I used to work with a carpenter from Germany (mentioned in various previous posts) who constantly berated me for some instance or other of carelessness. His attitude was colored by his apparent general prejudice against all Americans. (he never became a U. S. Citizen and in fact had carried a green card since 1966, when he first came here from West Germany.)
He used a large compressor, which he connected to an “air hammer” and “air stapler” and other pneumatic tools. He could get really angry with me for stepping on the compressor hose, usually about 50 feet long or so. He didn’t bat an eye when I pointed out to him that he had just stepped on the hose.
But what really stands out is a goof he committed when we were plastering walls. He was working on the ceiling, standing on a ladder. He had just lectured me on paying attention to what I am doing–and just after that he stepped off the ladder and plunked one foot into a bucket of wet plaster! I never let him hear the end of it.
When I was working at the guard job, a new night guard–I’ll call him Frank–had relieved me at midnight Thursday; he would work graveyard midnight to 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. When I came in Saturday afternoon to relieve Frank, I found out right away that he:
- Was not in the lobby and in fact I didn’t see him for at least ten minutes.
- Had ignored alarms sounding. One sounded just as I came in the building, and I shut it off and called the alarm company.
- Had not checked the other exit doors to see that they were locked. In fact, just as I got to the lobby and shut the one alarm off, I saw people disregard the sign (if he had put it up!) and go out that door, setting that alarm off!
- Had not raised the flags as required Friday morning. (The other gravyard-shift guard told me about this.)
I was hard put to imagine how this idiot knew how to dress himself, start his little pickup truck, find the Ed. Center building, and shut the pickup’s engine when he got there Saturday morning! Naturally, he wasn’t there anymore after that.
I used to work at a welding supply warehouse in Albuquerque, and one of the things we did was to service and refill compressed gas cylinders. Generally this meant emptying the rest of the Oxygen, CO[sub]2[/sub], Helium, etc, then removing and testing the valve, pressure testing the cylinder itself, etc.
Well, one day we got a bottle with a color scheme we hadn’t ever seen (they are color-coded for different gases), and one of my coworkers asked “hey guys, what do they use Chlorine for?” and then opened up the valve to try to release the pressure. F-ing idiot. We had to evacuate the building. Luckily only a little bit got out before the plant manager shut it off.
About a month later he did the same thing with a bottle of Hydrogen.
one of my coworkers (who no longer works here for other reasons) had this thing with pens. he always had to twirl them in his fingers. if he dropped one, he’d kick it to the side and pick up another from the desk and start again. he always had to use 2 computers, and because his chair had wheels, he’d just push off of the floor with his feet, glide gracefully to the computer, enter some data, then do the same to get to the other computer. One time, he didn’t kick the pen far enough, he went to glide across the floor, the tire caught on the pen, and he flipped the chair. I looked at him, shook my head, and then just continued back to work.
I work in a serious electronics field – bio-medical repair (x-ray machines, patient monitors, etc.) At one shop the lighting was poor at the workbenches. The boss bought fluorescent task lamps that mounted under the shelf on the bench. They were great, but required assembly, including wiring the switch.
One technician wired his switch with the hot wire (black) and the neutral wire (white) on opposite ends of the switch. This meant that when the switch was turned on, he had a direct short through the switch.(!!!)
So he gets done, flips the switch, and BRRRRAAAAAANNNNKKKK! You could hear the conduit rattling in the walls until the circuit breaker tripped. Scared the hell out of us.
So he takes it apart, we show him that he had the wires reversed, and he feels stupid. Twenty minutes later, he puts it back together and flips the switch again. You guessed it – BRRRRAAAAANNNNKKKK!
He’d simply switched the black and white wires on his original job. Now it was shorted again, in mirror image.
Puzzled at not seeing another student worker for a while, I asked after his well-being. His well-being is now in the hands of State Corrections. In the computer lab, each student/student worker/instructor is assigned a log-in name. This student’s ex-wife had filed numerous harrassment charges and had printouts of threatening emails she suspected her ex was sending. We routinely look for chatroom logs, porno site hits, stuff like that to keep the college happy. His college computer lab log matched her printouts. Campus police and City PD escorted him from the computer lab.
I’m on a School trip with another teacher.
We are each supervising 6 pupils aged 11-12.
We’re walking down the side of a main road, crossing side roads. At every one, I tell my lot ‘Stop. Now watch the road as you cross.’
She’s not bothering with this, so gets ahead.
The she decides to cross the main road. A quick look, and she crosses, with just enough time for her before a lorry comes.
Since she hasn’t said anything to the kids, after a second or so, one notices that she’s crossing. Without looking, he steps out. Then the next one notices and he follows, and so on.
Now there’s a string of kids right across the road and the lorry is slamming on its brakes.
It stopped a couple of feet from the pupils (who were paralysed with fear).
Hey OrcaChow and Spiny Norman- is it just something about the military???
I was in the US Army from 1996-2000. When I first got to permanent duty station in Vilseck Germany, I was in a tent with a few other soldiers and a couple of NCOs. Our “Yukon Stove” died out. I had been in this tent a few days and knew it was just out of fuel. I told the Staff Sergeant that I was going outside to change the fuel can. He figured it was something else, but I assured him that it was just the fuel. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeell…I went outside and changed the fuel can and moments later WHOOSH!!! I actually saw orange flash through a GP Medium tent. He lost his eyebrows, some hair, and his hands were bandaged for a while.
I feel really bad about that. I really don’t want to pin the stupidity on either of us. Yes, he should have just waited to see if more fuel fixed the problem, but I should have made sure I wouldn’t toast an NCO.
I’d like to think so, but I’ve seen too many stupid people in the private sector to pin it all on lax military standards. And the bigger, more dangerous toys people get to play with in the military probably make for more memorable stories.
We needed to aquire an image of that day’s Star-Tribune’s front page. There wasn’t an Star-Tribune to be found in the building so my co-worker (whom I lovingly refer to as AnusHead) suggests that since Amazon.com provides images of most of the books they sell, perhaps they sell daily newspapers as well and have an image of today’s Star-Tribune. I couldn’t figure out how to explain, without succumbing to numbing rage, that it’s not really feasible that Amazon.com would sell TODAY’S…LOCAL…NEWSPAPER on their website.
The Army is a wonderful place to watch people do really dumb stuff. Some things you would just as soon forget, like the kid who walked into the tail rotor of a helicopter right after the lecture about not being able to see the spinning rotor.
There was dumb stuff that didn’t do any real injury. In a class on the use of tear gas I watched the instructor pull the pin on a gas grenade and throw it UPWIND. We let the class leave but the guy in charge made the instructor stay.
I was working as a Production Assistant in my salad days. Got on the music video shoot for Don Johnson’s “Heartbeat” video. ( Through an incredibly ironic twist of fate, I shot a show for MTV like 18 months ago called “MTV-25 Lame”, where a few comedians made fun of, then voted to see what was the single lamest music video of all time. Heartbeat won 
).
I go downstairs in the Puck Building in NYC, to use the bathroom. I go into a stall and find an open knife. Fairly large blade, kind a grip might keep on the belt to cut rope and whatnot. It was liberally dusted with cocaine.
I wiped it off, rinsed it and closed it. Found out whose it was, and walked up to him. I asked if he had lost anything, and when he looked at me blankly, I took it out and showed him the knife, and remarked " don’t worry, I washed it off". Nobody else witnessed this. He was so furious that he made every other shoot I EVER saw him on living hell for me. Sad part? He is now the Abuse Coordinator for our union. One is supposed to go to HIM if one is addicted to a substance. Uh huh… Yeah, I know, recovered addicts make the best counsellors because they’ve been there, etc. But this guy?
He was using both very heavy machinery AND high voltage as a part of his job, while on cocaine. Jerk.
Second story is second-hand, I only witnessed the beginning but it’s horrific enough to repeat. I saw some film students at my alma mater loading gear into canvas hampers, the day before spring break one year. I’d stopped by to talk about a job I was going to do with someone. I wished the guys luck, they were off to Florida to shoot their thesis.
This thesis film involved a car chase, and the director got the idea to shoot some of it from the air. They hired a crop duster, and up they went. All sorts of cool angles. Then the director wanted a straight-down shot, tracking the cars. The student cameraman ( to his young professional credit) refused because it was dangerous.
The student Camera Assistant stepped up, calling the cameraman a wimp ( to use polite terms), and said he would shoot it for the director. So, this kid and the crop duster pilot went up, and the pilot rolled the plane onto it’s wing edge long enough to apparently get a shot. Also long enough for the assistant cameraman to fall out of the plane, and die. I blame the pilot. Because students at my alma mater were covered by the school’s certificate of insurance while shooting their films, the school had to pay out to the kid’s parents. Awful thing to have happen, this kid was SO gung-ho that he ignored the basics.
Cartooniverse
One of my friends back when we were both 16 or 17, worked at a wendys, due to it’s location the store stayed busy throughout the entire day and we were alway rushed. Well my friend Jeff needed to cook more of the chicken nuggets, well to cook these you’d place them in a vat of grease that was like 400 degrees. Well Jeff was in a hurry so he just turns the bag upside down dropping like twenty nuggets into the grease, and it splashed all over his arm. Right after that I and all the customer in the dinning room heard, “ooooOOOOHHHHHH FFFFUUUUUCCCCKKKKin SSSHHHIIITTTT” yeah he got burned pretty bad luckily no scars anyway
Speaking of fast food, when I worked at McDonald’s, I watched a co-worker of mine loading a fry basket over the fry vats full of very hot oil (over 300 degrees). She had been on a diet and had lost some weight–so much so that her wedding ring slipped off her finger into the oil. My co-worker instinctively reached deep into the vat to catch the ring–severely burning her arm almost up to the elbow.
(Yes, we changed the oil!)
When drawing plans for a public building, we include a spec sheet. The spec sheet indicates what brand, color,etc…
recently we completed the plans to a smallish office with two bathrooms: men’s and women’s.
on the bathroom detail sheet, we spec’d out hand dryers (2), urinals (3), fem hyg. disp. (1) and so on.
typically, we draw the bathroom once for ‘quick’ jobs (if its a mirror image) with the urinals ghosted in to indicate placement in the men’s room.
We went in to create a punch list ( its where we make a list of all the things the contractor must fix before we give final approval on a building and it can be ‘opened’ to the public).
there in the mens room, right next to the urinal was the fem. hyg. disp! It even had “TAMPONS” written on it and little pictures, too.
a memo went out shortly after: please indicate which restroom the fem hyg disp. belongs in!